Santa is Coming!

I live in Hungary. In our corner of the world Santa is called St. Nicolaus (Mikulás in Hungarian) and he comes on the night of 5 December and the children get their small gifts the next morning. Kids get sweets in a bag if they were good, and a golden colored birch switch if not.

To honour this day, I made a small wire framed Santa and he brought me some nice threads (and let me hide the ugly pins that keep him upright behind those nice threads).

Recently a friend of mine borrowed me Salley Mavor’s new book Felt Wee Folk: New Adventures. The book contains detailed descriptions of how to make many of her beautiful dolls. I used one of those patterns and modified a bit to look more like Santa. Santa is about 14 cm (~5.5 in) tall including his hat and 10.5 cm (~4 in) without it.

I used chenille stems (pipe cleaners) for the body and wool felt for the coat, hat and beard. The head is a 20 mm wooden bead.

Just started wrapping one leg:

Legs are ready:

Here is Mr Skinny Legs Santa without his coat on.

Pattern for coat, hat and beard.

Beard is almost ready:

I’m far from the perfection Salley is creating her artwork, but I really enjoyed making this doll. I plan to make some other similar projects in the future. You can enjoy Salley’s creatures at her page.

I hope you were good and got something nice from St. Nicolaus!

Cheers,

  

Christmas Tic Tac Toe

We love playing board games so I made a Christmas Edition Tic Tac Toe game for us. I recently found this nice little red velvet purse that give me the idea. This also makes it a nice travel bag game. Instead of Xs and Os the game pieces are small brass bells and wooden snowflakes.

Did you know, that there are 255,168 unique games of Tic Tac Toe to be played. Of these, 131,184 are won by the first player, 77,904 are won by the second player, and 46,080 are drawn. If neither player makes a mistake, the game is drawn. Thanks, Jesper Juul!

Cheers,
Emese

Necklaces

Lately I posted lots of necklaces so I created a new page where you can find them all side by side.

Just click to this link for necklaces to find the page.

Have a nice day!

Cheers,
Emese

Mini Memory Quilt Part 2

After a few hours of piecing and quilting, my mini memory quilt is ready. I used the leftover of my memory quilt but with smaller squares. The first part of this project can be found here: Mini Memory Quilt Part 1.

Using parts of the same duvet as previously, this small quilt became very soft and fluffy. Using my regular sewing machine I sew some straight lines close to the edges so everything stays together, then finished it up by manual quilting some hearts. The quilt is so thick, that I couldn't do the usual rockning motion of the needle, I had to go up and down and up and down... It was very slow. They are just freehand hearts, and I still need to add some.

Rewatched Jenny’s great video tutorial about binding. I used machine binding for the front side then hand binding for the back of the quilt.

Here you can see my two memory quilts together:

My daughter was very happy with this quilt and started playing with it right away. The background is my Memory quilt.

I still have a few small squares left, one day I will use them. But not today. Probably not this year...

Cheers,
Emese

Crochet Tube Necklace

This pretty crochet tube necklace can finish off an outfit perfectly. Especially when you can make it yourself to match! For this necklace I used the same multi coloured Catania yarn as for my curly crochet necklace.

I used a size 3 US crochet hook and a yarn called Schachenmayr Catania, which is a 100% cotton, 50g = 125m (1.75oz = 137 yds) yarn.

Skills: magic ring, chain stitch, slip stich, single crochet
Materials: yarn, crochet hook, scissors

Instructions:
Start with a magic ring.
6 single crochet in the ring and close with a slip stitch.
Crochet 1 sc in each stitch. Do not close each round with a slip stitch, just keep on crocheting
Finish off and weave in end.

Make your tube as long as your tube necklace you wish to have. You can start with more than 6 single crochets in the first round, this will make your tube thicker.

Cheers,
Emese

Felt Bead Necklace

This time I would like to show you a necklace made from felt beads and organza. For this project you can use any kind of felt, even some small scraps. This is a very easy project, you can involve your kids, they will have lots of fun doing some colourfull necklaces.

To make a felt bead, begin by cutting out felt trapezes, mines are about 10 cm long, and 1 cm and 5 cm wides but you can use any size you like. Wrap the felt around a bamboo skewer and use some glue to keep it together.

If you made a few beads, you can thread them using an organza ribbon. You can also mix in some other beads to make the necklace more interesting.

Cheers,
Emese

Mini Memory Quilt Part 1

You might remember that a few weeks ago I made a memory quilt for my doughter (you can take a look at it here: Memory Quilt Part 1, Memory Quilt Part 2, and Memory Quilt Part 3). I had some scraps from that project and decided to create a mini memory quilt that will be a blanket for a doll.

It is very similar to the "big" memory quilt, a set of random pink squares with a few crazy squares here and there. I just had to put those crazy squares in the desing.

Here are some of the scraps I was working with:

The squares of the original quilt were 10 cm by 10 cm (about 4 in x 4 in) but for this mini quilt I felt that I need something smaller so I went for 5 cm by 5 cm (~2 in by 2 in) squares.

After a couple of hours of sewing the quilt top is ready!

And some details of the quilt:

Now I just have to quilt it... Since it is not going to be a fluffy comforter, I will be able to use my basig sewing mashine to do some quilting. Will show you the result as soon as I can find some time to finish it.

Cheers,
Emese